


february

by alligatorblood



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, F/F, Halloween, Horror, Human AU, Self-Harm, Supernatural Elements, Toxic friendship, Violence/Gore and Blood, here have a fic with my fucking soul in it for no discernible reason!, literature references, mentions of Rose/Emmett, when i say gore i mean it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:20:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26938042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alligatorblood/pseuds/alligatorblood
Summary: Bella hasn’t been the same since the murder of her best friend. As a killer circles Forks, Bella forms a tentative friendship with Alice Cullen and her brother Edward.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Bella Swan, Rosalie Hale/Bella Swan
Comments: 28
Kudos: 131





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Since I don’t have the means to make my own movie, I present you with This. It takes place over the course of one year. October is more or less the present time, and it jumps back to previous months. Broad trigger warnings in the tags.
> 
> Sidenote: Rose is not related to the Cullens. Human AU...mostly.

You will stab me in the chest while I worship wickedness.

\- Marrow, Molly Drag

.

**_JANUARY_ **

The wind puts a bend in the rain.

The morning had started out badly, powder blue sky shone through the heavy clouds, bright but _cold._ An old pine tree uprooted in the wind last night, crashed right into the transformer behind the police station. So, no power. It's how the story usually starts, the search party combing the hills, weaving through the trees, a hand always _always_ on the walkie. There's a tipline, a base set up in the middle of the waterlogged football field, and a steady rotation of grim-faced, selfless volunteers. It's a town-sized effort. Except it's been going on about two weeks.

It all stopped today when Bella Swan found the body.

Facedown at the edge of the river about six miles outside of town, blond hair rippling in the current, one arm flung out into the water. The veins look black beneath the translucent skin. Bella falls to her knees in the brush. She doesn't have to turn her to know that her face would match the one plastered to every locker, every telephone pole.

She'd know her best friend anywhere.

…

…

**_OCTOBER_ **

In English class, a black poodle follows Faust home. Suspicious, Faust casts a spell and invokes Mephistopheles, an invitation if the demonic servant has ever seen one. To be complicit in one's own downfall…

Bella smiles as her classmates stumble over the rocky translation. Beside her, Edward Cullen flips the page in his worn library copy. She notices he's about twenty pages ahead of the rest of the class. Exactly what kind of teenage boy reads _Faust_ on his own time, she's not quite sure, but he outlines the chapters for her and folds them into stars. He feeds them through the vents in her locker. They fall out onto her feet every other morning.

Once out of some potent combination of curiosity and malice, she turned in her seat and looked right at him, his red hair, green eyes, myriad of freckles. "Why do you do it?" she'd said, and he blanched, caught and somehow surprised by it.

"I just," he began, shaking his head. He'd traced a long finger around the edges of Goethe's life's work. "He's my brother…I feel…responsible, somehow. To you."

"You had nothing to do with it," she'd muttered, but that was the end of that. She could tell by the shift in his jaw, that familiar muscle memory from her own elongated stonewall.

Now, the bell rings, and everyone bails. Bella tucks her book into her bag. Edward- usually the first one out of the room, like he can't bear another second of her- slides her a torn-off corner of a piece of graph paper with two phone numbers written neatly in line with the squares.

"What's this?"

"My mother, she's a psychiatrist. She doesn't have a practice right now, but she could get you in touch with someone. If you needed it."

Bella raises an eyebrow. "I barely know you."

"Look," he says and it's clear he's ripping the words from his chest. "Emmett is…he's been talking to a grief counselor in there and it's helped. He wanted the same for you."

She wants to lash out a little bit and ask why Emmett wouldn't say that to her face, but she knows the answer. Instead, she picks up the scrap of paper. "What's the other number?"

"That's Alice, my sister. She was-"

"Rose's friend," Bella says, nodding quickly, nodding too many times. "I know, I remember."

Edward looks uncomfortable enough to disappear between atoms. Maybe he's never had to play messenger boy before, or maybe he's been doing it all his life. He pushes his hair away from his forehead and takes in a breath that shakes him a little. "You don't have to carry a cross for her, you know," he says quietly.

She folds the paper and sticks it in her pocket. The smile she gives him is weak, but he's in no place to judge her for anything really.

.

There are forty-seven pictures of Rose taped to the mirror that sits on her dresser. Some are of the two of them together, but mostly it's just Rose kissing at the camera or laughing or rolling her eyes. They used a picture Bella took for her missing person's report. It was just after a football game in the artificial daytime of the stadium lights. The sky looked obnoxiously purple behind her, and the Spartans didn't stand a chance. Rose, in her cheer uniform, faint glitter under her eyes, mildly pissed from pushing Emmett away when he tried to bear hug her in all his linebacker sweat, stench, and glory. She'd looked at Bella then, right as she lifted her camera and smiled, like glass breaking.

She's never liked that picture. Too bad it painted the nation for months. Even after she was found. After the funeral.

When Bella blinks, she sees the negative.

..

She texts Alice the next day because it's the polite thing to do. Not that she's so worried about manners these days. The tips of Rose's fingers that had been submerged in the river water were wrinkled. Her eyes were open and unseeing against the muddy riverbank.

Alice is- of course, like everyone- here for her if she ever wants to talk. About anything. It's nice. _Everyone's_ so nice. Bella starts to type some wordy version of _likewise_ so it doesn't read like the brush-off that it actually is. Before she can finish typing, Alice sends another message. Several.

_You don't have to bullshit me. Really._

_I thought we could hang out. Reminisce or not. Hopefully not._

_I miss her, you know?_

Bella resigns herself to the only thing that has felt true for months. She's been skating by on everyone's pity and leniency, not bothering to think about her own life- college or whatever is still possible for her at this point. Missing Rose has eaten her.

She asks Alice if she wants to do lunch tomorrow. The reply is immediate. There are four exclamation points. Forks High is small, but she doesn't really know Alice. It's hard to believe Rose was friends with her too. Apart from what Rose threw Emmett's way, Bella felt like she had every piece of her.

.

The radio on top of the fridge murmurs as she dries the dishes. It's a local station, usually high school sports and talk radio with a red tendency, but lately, it's all about the killings. She switched it on for some background noise, but instead it has her turning her head to listen, checkered dishrag running over a bone dry plate. It's an AM station, ancient and weaker at night to reduce interference. She catches bits through the hissing distortion.

… _an eleventh body discovered…-letely drained of blood…investigators are following a number of le-..._

Her cell phone rings on the table. She moves slowly across the kitchen, suddenly sluggish, and catches it on the fifth ring. It's Charlie checking in. He's been coming home later and later since all of this started so many months ago. He tells her he'll be home in a few hours with takeout even though she's already through with dinner.

"Be careful," she tells him.

"Always am."

After she hangs up, she looks at the moon through the kitchen window, obscured in the clouds as it is. The tall pines look silver. Some unnamable force pushes her to the back door and calls her to the darkness.

.

Last year's yearbook is dedicated to Rosalie Hale. There's a four-page spread filled with pictures of her. Head cheerleader, junior class vice president, co-captain of the debate team. _A model Spartan_. _Gone but never forgotten…_

Bella is all over her tribute as well. The yearbook staff gave her their condolences by telling her it was difficult to find pictures of Rose _without_ Bella in them, they were so close. Each of them would find her during school and press a contraband printed-out picture of them into her hands as a keepsake. By the time the summer started, she had about fifteen of these abuses of the photo printer. The beach trip, the Halloween dance, and everyone's favorite: the bake sale. Rose holding a purple cupcake and kissing Bella's cheek, eyes closed. Every time she looks at it, she can feel the blood rush to her face, the sticky lip gloss on her skin.

Rose would have kissed her like that camera or not. It's just who she was, and everyone loved her for it. How could you not? She would just look at you and smile and send a starburst through your whole body. Something to spend your whole life chasing. Like all girls who die young, Rose lit up the room. She called Bella her favorite little storm cloud.

Opposition is true friendship.

.

The night air is misty from the late afternoon downpour. Bella's boots squelch along the decently beaten trail she cuts every night from her backyard and into the trees. She didn't bother with a jacket. It would just get in the way.

She notices with a hand to her neck that her throat is dry. It's making her head pound, but she pushes through it, through the branches that scrape against her bare arms. The earth is soaked, the scent heavy and bearing down around her. Water drips from pine needles, murky with pitch.

It's dark, but she knows the clearing when she gets to it. About twenty minutes from her house. Through the thin clouds, the stars press in on her from above. It feels like the top of her head is scraping the sky. God, she's _thirsty_.

Of all things, she thinks of Faust as she pulls the knife from her pocket. Edward was right. She _doesn't_ have to carry a cross for her. Nothing like that.

She raises the knife and brings it into the front of her shoulder with all her might. Pain detonates through her nerve endings. She screams through gritted teeth as she sinks to her knees, blind with pain.

Across town, a sun-bleached missing poster flutters from a neglected bulletin board and lands in a grimy puddle on the sidewalk.


	2. Chapter 2

**_MARCH_ **

This weather is shit. There's no other way to put it. It's freezing. The wind won't stop. It rains slush all day and freezes overnight. The roads are long and crusted with black ice, and every day feels like another thread in a cruel fate.

It's been two months since Bella screamed through the radio that she found her. _Charlie, Charlie, Dad, DadDadDad. Her eyes are open._

The paramedics wrapped her in a blanket when they got her to the road. She sat on the back of Charlie's cruiser as he looked over the bagged body on the stretcher and shook his head. He braced a fist against the back of the ambulance. _Goddamnit_ , he'd said lowly, but hard enough to shake the ground.

Now, she's sitting at the edge of a hospital bed while Dr. Cullen stitches up the long cut down the inside of her bicep. Usually, this would be something for the harried ER medics, but since she is who she is, the Chief of Medicine himself is closing her cut. It's not the first time either.

"Bella," he says quietly. "This wasn't an accident."

She wonders if she would feel ashamed under his worried gaze this time last year. Right now, all she does is shrug and glance over at the psychiatrist lingering by the door, clutching her clipboard. It's never going to feel normal, the needle poking around in there despite the numbed skin.

"I need you to be honest. Were you trying to kill yourself?"

Bella pulls back to look him in the eye. "No," she says.

…

…

**_OCTOBER_ **

Alice drinks her weight in green tea as Bella pokes at her salad. They're not supposed to leave campus for lunch anymore. Not after Rose and those hikers and the tourists over the summer. But what is anyone going to do about it? Rosalie's eyes were open.

They left fourth period early and by now lunch is long over. If she had to guess without checking the time, she's supposed to be in her last period civics class right now, but this wilted salad suits her just fine.

Alice hasn't said much, but Bella can tell she's holding back an ocean for her sake. She can't imagine being that small comes with much restraint. Rose had a foot on her, easy. When she walked into the diner, she made Bella feel tall. _What I lack laterally, I make up for in fashion sense. And taste._ That had been the first thing she said to her in a voice that would probably take well to sarcasm, sweet with a beguiling edge. Maybe that's Alice as a whole.

Behind them, the dinosaur TV mounted in the corner is throwing color against the window. It catches Bella's eye. A Seattle news station. A picture of a missing boy. Bella looks away from the glass, jarred slightly to find Alice staring at her over her tea mug.

"What?" Bella says. It comes out defensively.

"She kept us apart, you know."

Bella stabs a mushroom with her fork. It's just how Rose was. In control. "Yeah, I figured."

"I guess it's useless to wonder why." Alice frowns a little. "We're meeting now, that's what's important."

"Right."

"She talked about you, like all the time. She was only friends with me because of Em…and because she could talk to me about clothes, no offense."

Bella gestures dismissively with her fork to distract herself from the murky thoughts swirling around in her head. _So you had fashion… I had_ _ **everything**_ _._ Of course, it's not a competition. Who knew the dead girl best? Bella would win that every time and Alice knows this. Or maybe she doesn't. Maybe she's genuinely trying to connect.

"What I'm saying is…the way she talked about you, it made me feel like _I_ knew you. I feel like we're already friends. Crazy right?" Alice eyes the dark red splotch at the front of her shoulder, but she doesn't comment on it.

"Yeah."

"And I know it's ridiculous to march up to somebody and demand their friendship, but I've always been direct. For better or worse. So here I am."

On that day, Rose was wearing a necklace Bella got her for her half birthday. Curly rose gold cursive bent into _Bitch_. She laughed when she opened the box and squeezed Bella's arm. Hard. _You get me_ , Rose whispered, her breath warm against her ear.

"Here you are," Bella echoes. She flicks her eyes over Alice. Pretty in such a delicate way, but there's something underneath. Rose was drawn to that, she's sure.

"We don't have to be best friends," Alice continues. "Just someone to talk to sometimes. Someone you don't have to lie to."

That grabs her a little, but if she really _knew_ Rose, that's exactly the kind of thing she would say.

As they're leaving, Alice touches her arm and squints her eyes through the light rain. "Drive safe. Text me if you want."

Bella watches her drive off. The rain slowly soaks her hair. She rolls her shoulders, not even wincing. The blood on her shirt dried last night. She didn't bother changing for school. Who would say anything?

She thinks of her knife gored into her shoulder. It makes her laugh as she pulls the collar of her shirt away from the wound. It's completely healed by now, a thick silver scar in its wake. She can feel the knife in her pocket like a hot iron.

She coughs twice into her elbow. When she pulls her arm away, it's dotted with blood.

…

…

**_JANUARY_ **

The police arrest Emmett Cullen in the middle of his third-period gym class. He was sitting out on the bleachers instead of dunking on freshman like usually would before his girlfriend went missing. Before her body turned up with bruises wrapped around her throat, a busted skull, and his skin beneath her fingernails.

The story gets around. It even makes it to Bella who has barely left her bedroom since that foggy morning, the soaked knees of her jeans. It goes like this: In the dislocated limbo between Christmas and the New Year, Rosalie Hale calls it quits with her boyfriend of three years. It's seemingly out of nowhere, and Emmett puts his fist through a wall at the party where it all falls apart- what a violent guy. By the end of break, she's seeing someone else, one of his teammates, some college guy, a faceless _anybody else_. Emmett confronts her. It gets out of hand. He kills her and dumps her body outside of town. His alibi can't be confirmed. So many people saw him punch that wall. It's a good story. Beginning, middle, and end. Open and shut, a weary detective's dream.

It's so easy to hate him. In taking Rose from them, he cut a deep scar into the world. It's such a clean cut, it overheals and bloats with collagen.

From holding, he stupidly uses his one phone call on Bella.

_I didn't do it_ , he says, voice crackling over the line. _I swear to god._

_I know,_ Bella says. And then she hangs up.

…

…

**_MAY_ **

_The body of twenty-eight-year-old Samuel Ethridge was found this morning in Clallam County. The Seattle musician was reported missing by family in early April. The apparent cause of death and state of the crime scene aligns with several unsolved cases in the Seattle area and down the coast of Washington-_

Mike Newton shuts the laptop and rests his arm over it. "God," he says. "When does it stop?"

"I read online there's not a drop of blood in any of the bodies," Eric says. He shoves some fries in his mouth. Jess elbows him hard enough to make him sit up. He rubs his ribs and frowns sourly. "It's a tragedy, whatever."

"Guys, it could happen to any one of us," Angela says, shivering. She turns to Bella, who's barely been listening. These are the pity friends she has made since Rose. She doesn't mind them much. They mean well, but any affinity she might have for them is slogged in lukewarm muck. "What does your dad say about all of this?"

"I wouldn't know." Bella twists the cap off her lemonade and stares at the scraped tabletop. "He doesn't talk about it at home."

Eric leans in. "Some of the bodies have bites taken out of them."

"Yeah, right," Jess says, rolling her eyes.

"I'm not kidding. I've been following this case," he says, a deranged tinge in his eyes, " _religiously_."

.

_What would you do if I ever died?_ Rose had asked her one afternoon over their math homework half-done in purple and blue ink. Bella took her cherry lollipop out of her mouth and twisted it in her fingertips, faking contemplation as easily as Rose faked cramps to get out of watching Emmett play video games in his room all afternoon. _I'd kill myself,_ she said finally, meaning it about as much as her lazily shaded graphs.

Blue hair elastic between her teeth, Rose twisted the length of her blond hair into a bun. _That's stupid._

_I know._

Eyes blue. Cold. Bella could feel the snowflakes of her gaze. _I would too_ , Rose said, circling her wrong answer. _I mean it._

_I know._

.

Charlie feels uneasy letting her go anywhere alone. So, Jess drives Bella to school a few days a week. She talks a lot to make up for Bella's near silence. When she zones out, it's almost like white noise as she watches the trees blur by. In the passenger mirror, her cheeks look sunken in, a collapse of vitality. She thinks of the cool brush of the pine needles last night. The knife in her hand a conduit of dark energy, poised barely an inch above the skin of her thigh.

"Did you hear me?" Jess says a little louder. They're in the school parking lot now. How long have they been here?

Bella shakes her head to wake up a little. "What?"

"I asked if you finished the readin- Hey, you have something on your neck." Bella lifts a hand to brush her neck, and Jess gasps sharply. "Jesus, Bella! What happened?"

Her hands are dark with bruises all the way to her fingertips. She touches her neck and feels a dry crusting. Jess leans over and pushes her hair back. She freezes with her fingers still tangled in Bella's hair.

"Bella…there's blood all over you."

Bella reaches for her backpack down on the floorboard. "Don't worry," she says. "It's not mine."


	3. Chapter 3

**_OCTOBER_ **

Alice is the first friend she's had over since Rose. But because it's not exactly friendship that holds them together, Bella feels a little on edge as Alice slowly takes in her bedroom.

She drapes a red and black monstrosity of a dress over the back of Bella's desk chair. It's all scratchy tulle and crushed velvet. The Halloween dance is next week, and Alice reminds her it's the kind of thing friends do together, even if it's just a stupid high school function in a room full of people that are going to stare at them all night. They stopped being able to disappear into the crowd a long time ago.

While Bella received nationwide sympathy for discovering her friend's body, Alice and Edward faced some kind of icy hatred for living under the same roof as Emmett Cullen. Alice is quick and carefully guarded, but Bella saw the way her eyes flicked downward earlier today when the football team barreled through the hall, shouting about Spartan pride and that blue and gold. When Royce King smacked the stack of books out of her arms and stood over her. Bella helped her pick them up after he was gone. Alice seemed grateful when she didn't say anything.

Now, Alice looks at the pictures of Rose stuck to the mirror, a faint smile on her lips. Bella touches the corner of the polaroid of them in somebody's smoky, green-lit basement, wrapped around each other, smiling stupidly.

"What was that thing she'd say?" Alice asks, coming up beside her.

Bella feels herself smiling against the dread leadening her stomach that always comes with looking at these photos. She can still hear her whisper, their foreheads pressed together, fingers threaded. "Who loves you?" Bella says.

Alice sits down at the edge of her bed. She leans back on her palms and looks up at the ceiling, her throat a smooth column. Bella looks away until she speaks. "Yeah, that's it. It's funny. I had a girlfriend back then and everything, but…it meant more when _she_ said it. God, what does that say about me?"

"Nothing," Bella says. "That's just Rose."

Alice tilts her head to the side. "No, it wasn't."

"I just…" she starts. What could she possibly say? Everyone loved her so goddamn much. And Bella left them all in the dust. She used to daydream through geometry about running away with her, falling out of their lives, and disappearing without a trace; materializing in a decrepit castle together, a single crumbling tower and the two of them forever. "I want to remember-"

"The good? We all do, Bella. But this," she says, gesturing around the room, "it even _smells_ like her in here."

Rose is still in every corner of this room. It's not just the pictures. It's her forgotten clothes in the closet, her perfume on the dresser, the forever unfinished mystery novel on the bedside table. One of the ribbons she wore in her hair for cheer is looped over a knob on the dresser. The whole room is a time capsule dedicated to her.

Alice gauges her for a moment before she sighs backs off. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…attack you."

Bella nods, but she's right. The thing about Rose was that she was perfect about an inch into her being and that's it. She could make anybody feel amazing. Like, suddenly, you were worthy. All she had to do was smile at you, give you the time of day and you felt like a god. But she could take it all away just as easily. It was all the same to her whether or not you hated yourself by the end of it. It was difficult to see at first, that cold inside her and how it extended far deeper than anything nice.

_Who loves you?_ whispered at a party, in math class, under her breath going ninety-eight on the freeway, underneath the glow-in-the-dark stars of someone else's bedroom. _Who loves you?_ pressed into every inch of her skin, fingertips digging into her hips. She'd say it a million times, but at the end of the night, she would always run back to Emmett. _You really thought?_

Bella steps away from the window and sits beside her on the bed. Alice squeezes her upper arm supportively, but flinches after a moment and releases her. Her palm comes away stamped red with blood. "God, you're bleeding."

"What?"

"Like _really_ bleeding."

Bella pinches at the sleeve of her thick knit sweater. It's brown, but in the light, they can see the giant dark patch of blood. "Huh, look at that," Bella mutters. Before she can say anything else her nose starts streaming scarlet down her chin.

"Are you okay?" Alice asks, standing in a rush to get towels.

Bella laughs and grabs her arm. "I'm perfectly fine."

Blood oozes down her sleeve and leaks out the cuff. It drips to the floor. When she smiles, there's blood in her teeth. "How are _you_ doing?"

Alice stares at the accumulation of blood on the hardwood. The air takes on a metallic scent that envelopes them. Bella watches Alice make a choice.

"Why?"

"Everyone always asks me if I'm okay. They ask because they're being polite, and they expect me to be polite back. They want me to say I'm fine but with a frown and like, dark circles under my eyes because god forbid I ever feel joy again. But you…I'm guessing not many people check in on you."

"I'm fine." Alice digs around in her purse and hands her a small pack of tissues. "I'll be better after you take a cinematic blood shower."

They laugh together awkwardly. It starts to feel like something, a still, inchoate shape. Friendship without the flash, fused by the burn of Rosalie and the paralyzing cold of her absence.

Bella dismembers the moment. "Emmett's been writing me."

Alice winces. "I told him not to. You're the last person he should be reaching out to." She draws a knee to her chest and rests her chin on it. The playful shine in her eye that was only there for a moment to begin with fades away. "What does he say?"

The stack of letters clutters one of her desk drawers. They started out so heartfelt and consistent. _I hope you're alright. I'm worried. Ro loved you so much. Please write back, Bella. Please, find a way to come see me, I need to talk to you. God, I can't believe she's gone._ And then the most recent one from late September. She opened it and sliced her finger on the envelope. _I hope you burn in hell._

"That he's sorry," she says, gripping her bedspread. "He's sorry he killed her."

With Alice's eyes squeezed shut, Bella sees for the first time the pain ringing through her. She must feel so alone. Bella feels some darkness flare inside her as Alice covers her face with her hands.

"Why did you really make Edward give me your number?"

She wipes the corner of her eye with her thumb and smiles bitterly. "When I finally got a girlfriend last year, I was so excited to tell Rose. I thought she'd be happy, she was my friend, why wouldn't she be? But when I told her…just the way she looked at me, like dirt. Like...less than nothing. And then I'd watch her lead you into bedrooms at parties…like, why is _that_ different? Why is that better than being happy for me?"

"You hated her."

Alice shrugs like that hardly matters. "Yeah, but you loved her. I know you were the one she left Em for." She turns to face Bella. "Rose didn't want us to be friends, and I guess back then I was fine with it. But I'm not anymore."

It's interesting to Bella that Alice is willing to fight herself for their non-friendship. To try to forge something with someone who was unknowingly part of her torment. She's so different from Rose yet nothing close to Bella either. She doesn't really have time for friends, but seeing Alice like this, trembling on the edge of her bed makes her feel atilt. The angle is so harsh, she wrecks it.

She pulls the Halloween dress off the back of the chair and holds it up. It's hideous like everything to do with the holiday.

"So…we're going as vampires?"

..

In Heaven, the angels raise their voices and insist the world is perfect. Mephistopheles argues that the universe is imperfect because man is still in a state of misery. Bella cracks open the spine of her book. Tragedy gets old after a certain point.

Edward strums his guitar on the bench beside her. He has a notebook open in front of him and a pen tucked behind his ear. She's never been musically inclined, but it sounds nice. Better than the anatomy lesson they're currently ditching in favor of Alice's plan to check out the costume store in Port Angeles for Edward's costume. She managed to talk him into going with them. A trio of the unwanted.

The only reason either of them agreed to the trip was because Alice promised to make a day of it, and getting out of Forks for a few hours wouldn't be the worst thing. Especially since the bleeding stopped.

"If the Devil and God made a wager over your soul, do you think you'd make it to Heaven?"

Edward pulls the pen from his ear and scribbles out something in his notebook. He seems unbothered by such a heavy concept. "I think if my soul ever came up in divine conversation, I'd be fucked." He glances up at her, smiling a little. "But it means something that Mephisto has to _try_ to corrupt Faust in the first place. Goethe is optimistic in that right."

"I guess that's my midterm essay then." She closes her book.

"Happy is he who has the pure truth in him," he quotes. She half expects him to start talking about Milton next. For being a high school senior, she thinks he's better read than is considered healthy.

She glances at the scribbled lyrics in his notebook. "Stop making love to your misery."

He laughs. "So you _have_ read it."

"No," she says, rubbing her hands together against the cold. "Sparknotes."

Alice comes around the corner in a rush then. Her cheeks are flushed like she's been running, but the smile on her face is brighter than Bella's ever seen it.

"Sorry I'm late," she says. "I had to sneak out of McDaniel's class and Mike Newton caught me in the hallway. He's playing hall monitor I guess. I ran all the way here."

"We should get on the road," Edward says as he sets his guitar into the case.

"Oh, are you excited, Nosferatu?" Alice asks. She loops her arm through Bella's as they cross the parking lot to her Porsche. The one Alice justifies having as a high school senior by lamenting that she has to share it with Edward.

"I always thought I was more of a Sava Savanović."

"You're the only person who knows what the hell that means," Alice shoots back. "No, I've got it! I'll be Lestat, Bella will be Louis, and _you_ , my dear brother, will be Claudia."

Edward scoffs, but it fuses into a laugh. His smile takes up his face and his eyes squint a little. Bella has never seen either of them quite like this. Suddenly, like a blown-out artery, she wishes she'd met them earlier when they were like this all the time. When Alice wouldn't wither under the dirty looks in the hall and Edward was confident enough to play his guitar out on the grass during his free period.

Bella's heart gives a single solid thump before quieting for the remainder of the trip.

"Listen to us," Edward says, smiling still, "the children of the night."

.

Later, in her bedroom, wet hair around her shoulders, Bella makes a dent in _Faust_. English is just about the only class she bothers with anymore. She pages through the outlines Edward made for her, his careful slanted hand. Maybe it's not the class, just the friend.

Port Angeles was great, so much better than she could have hoped for. Alice made Edward try on half the costume store before settling on something straight out of a Victorian period piece complete with chest ruffles. After a while, he threw embarrassment to the wind, held his hands like claws, and chased them around the costume racks cawing in a bad Dracula impression, _I vant to suck yoere blood!_

Once they got him set for the dance, they spent over an hour in a little indigenous-owned bookstore and went thrifting for a little bit. This resulted in a stack of books handpicked by Edward and a green denim jacket that Alice assured her she could pull off. After, they got apple cider and looked out over the dark water as it broke against the rocks. She can still feel the heat in her chest, the warmth of Alice's hand in her own as she excitedly pointed at the seals lazing on the beach.

Sitting in her bedroom now, she almost wants to cry. She hasn't felt anything like this since Rose blew off a football game to go look at the stars from the back of Bella's truck. She's been so cold for so long.

Charlie knocks on her door even though it's open. He looks a little angry until he sees her wipe her eyes with her sleeve. Of course, she knows skipping school while there's a killer on the loose is a huge mark against her, but _god_ , she doesn't need another lecture right now. Not even one of Charlie's gruff, ambling ones.

"Hey," he says softly. He sits down at the edge of her bed by her knees and her scattered papers. "It's okay, Bells. What's going on?"

"I'm sorry," she says miserably through a film of tears. Charlie doesn't even have that many rules, but here she is, walking all over his trust.

"I know you're going through something…" He shakes his head, at a loss. "I know I might never understand it, but I'm here. Always. And…I just want to keep you safe, until we catch this bastard, you understand? I don't know what I'd do if you-" He drops his head into his hand, and Bella knows this is a state children should not bring out in their parents, the contemplation of loss.

Bella hugs him, squeezing for all the times he's lingered instead of just left. And now he's out there, picking up pieces of carnage. Who will keep _him_ safe? The tears burn in her eyes. "I can't let her go. It's too late."

"What?" Charlie squeezes her shoulders.

Her throat tightens like a fist. The words barely make it out, but once they do, they rip into the drywall. "What have I done?"

.

Seventeen miles outside of Forks, a forest ranger takes his last breath.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halloween Dance!! Things start to pick up a little from here ladies...!

**_FEBRUARY_ **

In the pure light of being, the creatures of Hell appear black and thinly outlined in red where their demonic life force meets our preternaturally neutral world.

The knife appears under her pillow like a dream, like wish fulfillment. The hilt is hot to the touch, forged in Hell, blade sharp enough to cut reality. It pulls her to the forest.

Guided by the darkness, she knows exactly what to do.

…

…

**_OCTOBER_ **

The bruises don't wait when Bella trips in the Cullens' driveway. She only made it about three steps out of her truck before the ground rushed up to meet her. Alice had been waiting on the front steps, waving cheerfully. Bella had the unenviable delight of watching Alice's cheer fuse into exasperation and then eventually, concern.

Alice offers a hand and pulls her to her feet. "What am I going to do with you?"

The scrape on the heel of her hand is pale white, almost lavender. Bloodless. Alice swallows and gestures toward the house. "Now that you've become intimate with my driveway, would you like to see the inside?"

The house is massive. Even when Emmett was still around, it's much too big for their small family. As Bella follows her inside, their footfalls echo. Alice catches her staring straight up at the skyscraping ceiling.

"Do you want me to say: _It's nice, but it sure is empty_. Because I totally will. Just for you."

"It _is_ nice."

"Imagine how it felt when my social worker told me I was going to be rich- not in as many words, but I could tell. I thought I was going to Scotland to live in a castle or something. I was eight, what did I know?" Alice glides into the kitchen, clearly very used to the wide-open spaces and excessive window walls.

There's a pitcher of a blood-red drink and some glasses on the granite island. A little yellow sticky note reads: _For the kids! Carlisle do NOT touch! (It has red dye no. 40!)_

"Sorry," Alice says as she tips the pitcher. The dark liquid bleeds into their glasses. "It's just lemonade. My mom loves Halloween."

Just as she says this, Bella notices the witch stickers on the glass door to the balcony that's filled with pumpkins and the orange fairy lights wrapping around the living room. Bella takes a sip of the red drink. It's overly sweet. "So you moved here when you were eight?"

"No, I was about thirteen. We used to move around a lot, but Esme wanted us to have roots. That was very important to her. _Roots_."

"In _Forks?_ "

"I grew up in Louisiana. The Pacific Northwest sounded like a fairytale. I loved it, and I still do. But back then, my biggest fear was wearing the same outfit as the other rich girl in the grade ahead. Now it's getting butchered in the fore-" Alice blanches and squeezes her fingers around her glass. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"

"I know." The way Alice looks at her then makes her feel like a shimmering outline of a person. She tears her gaze away and turns the glass in her hands. "When did they adopt Emmett?"

"Right after me. Mostly you meet kids you'll never see again, but my whole life, I remember him knocking heads with everybody no matter what happened to him. He never grew out of that." She smiles faintly. "The kid had _biceps_ when he was seven."

Bella thinks of the last letter she got from him, the crushed graphite and torn paper from the furious pressure of the pencil. _You miserable bitch, what the fuck did you do to her?_ Of course, she knew him before. He was Emmett Cullen, everybody's best friend. Not exactly book smart, but he was the first one you'd call if you got your car stuck in the mud or you just wanted to forget the shitty day you had. Bella had gotten to know him pretty well through Rose.

Alice lets out a breath and then perks up as if she didn't just spend the last few minutes in mourning. "Let's go upstairs."

It feels wrong to abandon her nearly full glass of bloody lemonade, but Alice already has her by the hand. They pass Edward on the stair landing. He has headphones on and a Gameboy in his hands. Alice snaps it closed on his thumbs as she goes by.

"Bella," he says by way of greeting then narrows his eyes at his sister. "Owlice."

"Deadward." She flourishes her arm toward the kitchen. "Mom made blood."

"Yay," he says with zero enthusiasm.

.

Bella's blood sings as Alice twirls in her costume. She digs her fingers into the soft blue duvet beneath her and looks away. The sudden shot of pure adrenaline threatens her corporeal form. Her heart thunders. Somewhere in the forest, a landslide starts.

"That good, huh?" Alice says with an eyebrow raised. "Good. Because if we're going to this stupid dance as a statement, the _least_ we can do is look hot doing it." When Bella doesn't say anything, Alice's smile lessens. For the second time in twenty minutes, Bella has her concerned. "I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but…is there something wrong with you?"

"Yeah, there's a few things," Bella says, pressing a hand over her chest. These blood rushes are just a tiny drop in the bucket. As her pulse quiets, she looks up at Alice standing there in an actual corseted dress with dark painted eyes and a vial of fake blood in her hand. She smiles, bewildered. "You do look hot though."

She rolls her eyes. "You look like you're going to throw up."

"I'm anemic."

"Then drink this." Alice tosses her the vial of blood. Miraculously she manages to catch it instead of grabbing open air as it shatters against the floor.

"Come here," she says as she unscrews the cap. There's a dabber inside like an expensive bottle of perfume. "Even your fake blood's bougie."

"Yes, _but_ we won't smell like old soda and corn syrup all night." Alice sits beside her and allows Bella to gingerly tilt her head to expose her neck, fingertips light on the angle of her jaw. There's no real method behind it, just the hypnotic red droplet as it slides from the corner of her mouth down her neck and pools at her collarbone. She makes two small dots for the classic bite mark, trying to ignore the tiny breath Alice takes in, the way the iron in her own, _real_ blood pulls to her almost magnetically. Her lips are dark red and the white points of her plastic fangs poke out slightly.

"Okay," she says, as Alice grabs her wrist and turns her head to look at her, their faces so close it feels a little dangerous.

"Do you homoerotically drip fake blood on all your friends or is this exclusive?" Alice whispers, that playful glint in her eye is comforting, offering an out if she wants one.

"Just you."

"Good," she says simply before doing the kind thing and rising to her feet. She checks the time on her phone and smiles at Bella, fangs and all. "You should get changed. I'm going to make sure Eddie does his eyeliner right."

.

As she slips the dark dress over her head, she imagines Rose beside her, staring at the intricate braid Alice twisted into her hair earlier. The ice of her gaze feels so real, Bella struggles to get her head out of the fabric just check behind her. She feels another swell of adrenaline, smaller this time. The world-narrowing feeling she's been getting for months grips her as she looks around Alice's darkly furnished bedroom. She can feel Rose in here like residue in the air and tells herself it's because they were friends. She must have been here all the time for Emmett, drinking their mom's blood lemonade and _not_ marveling at the luxury of it all because the Hales owned half the town themselves.

She turns back to the floor-length mirror and twists to see all sides of the dress. The skirt ends above her knee because Alice picked it out and Bella was averse to anything shorter. _We're not actually Victorians, Bella._ But it does look good on her. Better than anything she would have chosen for herself. Especially since the last time she dressed up for the holiday she was nine and went as the red M&M.

Her hair is longer than it's ever been, she hasn't really been paying attention lately. But in this mirror she hardly recognizes herself. Where she was once soft, she's now all hard angles, and while the exhausted look suits the vampire costume, she understands quite fully now why Charlie keeps buying her multivitamins and orange juice.

Alice appears in her reflection, leaning against her own doorway, watching Bella stare herself down in the mirror while swishing her skirt around.

"What do you think?" Bella asks. She turns and pushes her hair behind her shoulders.

"I think…I'm _so_ good." Alice steps into the room and spins Bella by her shoulders to face the mirror again. Together they look like a movie that ends in carnage. Alice rests her chin on Bella's shoulder, a soft, implacable look on her face.

Bella presses the vial into her hand and holds her hair back as Alice streaks her throat with candy apple scented blood.

"I used to wish I was you," Alice says quietly. She blows on the cold trail to dry it. "When she was with me, she only wanted you…I get it now."

"I never knew if she meant it or not when she kissed me," Bella admits, startling herself. She puts a hand over her mouth and turns away.

Edward pokes his head inside as Alice presses a hand to her back. "We're approaching fashionably late territory, ladies." He pushes his thumb into the point of his fang, and Alice shoots him a blistering look to which he holds his hands up innocently. "You told me to remind you."

He disappears and Bella links their fingers, still turned away. "I didn't mean to say that."

"It's okay. I won't tell." Alice squeezes her hand reassuringly. "C'mon, we have a gym full of people to unsettle."

..

Mike takes their tickets at the door, gaping through the entire exchange. Is it the fact that they're showing their faces outside of the bare legal requirements? Because Edward is with them? The blood all over them? The fact that Alice looks good enough to snap necks? Happy Halloween, marshmallow.

It's dark inside except for a few strong green lights that ignite the fog curling a good three feet off the floor. They could feel the music from the parking lot- the usual Halloween playlist. The place is packed, nevermind that it's because this is the only thing anybody's been allowed to do at night for months on account of the deaths surrounding the town. Bella decides all credit is due to Jess and Angela and the rest of the dance committee.

"I can't believe this doesn't suck," Alice says incredulously.

"Speak for yourself," Edward says behind them.

.

They do get stared at, but that was the whole point. Or half the point. What really matters is that Bella's not a dancer, but somehow Alice makes her feel less awkward. After a while, even Edward loses his usual stiffness and the three of them dance in a weird little triangle, laughing at how terrible they are, but alive together truly for the first time all year.

A slower song comes on, and Edward dips out to the punchbowl when Alice offers Bella her hand.

"Is he alright?" she asks as Alice loops her arms around her neck, wrists crossed, easy. Bella's hands move to her waist without thought.

"Yes. He thinks he's third-wheeling, but he's having fun. I can tell."

The song is mostly to give everyone a break, but couples clog the floor, swaying sluggishly the way teenagers do. Nobody really knows how to slow dance anymore, but it isn't that hard to lean into someone and mean it. The fog swirling around them smells like popcorn. Alice laughs when Bella twirls her, her skirt swishes around her legs, the wobbling green light hits her skin. Alice's name builds in her head as she spins back into her arms, invisible between the slow blinks of the strobe lights.

Over Alice's shoulder, Bella feels eyes. She looks up. Royce King is illuminated in green for just a moment before the darkness floods them again. He has his arms around one of Rose's old friends from the cheer squad, but he's watching them, his face pinched in disgust. He was never one of the people to color Bella a victim, and that's fine. She doesn't care about his sympathy, just the daggers he's glaring across the floor.

She scans the room for Edward, finding him content in the corner with some punch and the phone that's controlling the music. When she returns her gaze to Royce, their eyes lock for a brief second before he jerks away.

"What's wrong?" Alice asks her. She looks over her shoulder. The blood on her neck is smeared a little. She shakes her head and leans in close. "Fuck him," she whispers. "Don't let him ruin it. He's nothing."

Bella nods and the music picks up again. She can feel the press of people around them, Ghostface and Sidney, Things 1 and 2, the Spice Girls. Angela comes by with her camera, smiling shyly. She's dressed as a scarecrow and somewhere Jess is stumbling around as a pumpkin. She lifts her camera. "For the yearbook?"

Bella shrugs, but Alice takes a step away with a slight frown, reminded suddenly of how unwelcoming the past few months have been. Bella catches her by her fingertips. Angela's not like Royce or just about everyone else. "Both of us, right?" she asks Angela who nods enthusiastically.

"Yeah! Your costumes are great! We're doing a montage."

They smile for the student body. Bella's not sure if it's part of the plan, but they're leaned in together when the flash blinds them, and Angela gives them a thumbs up, blushing a little under her makeup freckles.

When Bella turns back, Alice's smile is luminous, a single star in her darkness. Without a word, Alice stretches up on her toes and kisses her in the green light and murky fog, a hand light on her cheek, plastic fangs sharp against her lip. Bella reacts instantly and draws her in closer, that feeling from earlier, the metal in her blood singing for Alice returns full force. For a few seconds, she feels it, the pure light of being washed over them. They appear golden with life.

Then she remembers who she is.

Ice shoots through her veins, numbing her out. She pulls away from Alice, the dreamy look in her eye, the sheer affinity too much to bear. Bella's cheeks feel warm. Blood drips from the corners of her eyes, her fingertips, her nose.

"Bella?" Alice says, sobering. She reaches for her. Bella flinches away. She turns on her heel and shoves her way to the exit. The dark hand pushes her across the parking lot, towards the entrance to the woods, away from the green night. She can hear Alice calling her name behind her. Her heart thumps solidly. Just once, pulling her home.

After all she's done, to throw it away on a single night. What was she doing back there? She _knows_ where the other half of her heart lies.

The knife forms in her hand, an extension of herself. The clearing is close, she can smell it. The darkness forces her along, insistent, angry, jealous. Betrayed.

She breaks through the trees, breathing hard, vision dark. In her hand the knife is heavy, tingling with intent. She lifts her head to the bright face of the moon and cries out in the darkness, the creature in her chest clawing at its prison. The inside of her head fills with light. Bella slashes the knife across her stomach. She braces her shoulder against a tree and clutches at the wound, pain ripping through her like a ferocious animal. When she pulls her hand away, blood from her fingertips splashes onto the ground.

"Come back to me," she says desperately.

A hand shoots up through the damp earth.

Behind her, Alice screams.


	5. Chapter 5

**_OCTOBER_ **

Alice's eyes widen as the figure rises from the earth. They roll back in her head when it speaks. She topples over and sags limply against the base of a tree, pale as a sheet. Inside Bella, relief floods the vacancy of dread.

Rosalie wipes the dirt from her face. Her irises are bright red.

"You," Bella breathes, safe from her worst fear. Coming out here and carving herself to no end, her best friend swallowed by the underworld forever. The pain rocks her. She doubles over, dizzy and cold.

Rose eyes Alice carefully before gripping Bella's arms and pinning them away from the cut. It's deep. Deeper than any of the others, that's why it worked so well, so quickly. It has her teetering on the line between magnificent and fatal.

"What did you do?" Rose demands. She leans in close and presses her own hands over the crude diagonal gash, the flaps hanging loosely like rags of flesh. Bella's dress is soaked through. Blood gushes beneath Rose's hands. Applying pressure is useless when she's already lost too much blood. Rose pulls back to look at her. Fragile thing, riddled with scars, gaunt and hunched over, sickly pale.

"I need to," Bella says. Her breathing is jagged. Panic skitters through her, but the heat and insistence behind her words is real.

Rosalie's eyes flash darkly. She tears the thin fabric away and tips her head back. Bella lurches forward and sinks her teeth into her neck. Beneath Rose's hand, the wound bridges together and solidifies thickly with a long, stiff scar. Months of impossible healing in thirty seconds. Bella feels the breath return to her chest as she pulls away and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

"That was close," Bella says, glowing. Life blooming beneath her skin, red cheeks, bright, clear eyes.

"Too close. You're reckless."

"I needed you."

Rose nods and presses her hand over Bella's heart. It beats slower these days. Half of everything she has lives within Rose. It leaves her weak when they part, but it's hardly a price. She wouldn't have it any other way.

"Why did you bring her?"

"She followed me."

"Yeah, she does that," Rose says dismissively. Bella glares at her, but all it does is make Rose laugh sourly. "I can't believe you sometimes. From me to Alice Cullen."

They each grab one of Alice's arms and carry her along with them. Bella feels a stab of regret at befriending her. She thinks of the delicate way she'd cupped the back of her neck not even a half-hour ago, the syrupy stickiness of the fake blood all over them, Alice's lips so soft against her own. She screws her eyes shut, crushing the memory. Alice shouldn't have had to see that. Bella wonders briefly what the consequences will be. For now though, she focuses on Alice's weight and the phantom pain ghosting her stomach at every step she takes. The tulle of her dress is weighted down with blood.

"What's it like in Heaven?" She asks Rosalie, who is still mostly caked in dirt. "Is it dark?"

Rose's face hardens. "You know I didn't go to Heaven," is what she says. What Bella hears is, _you wouldn't let me._

…

…

**_JULY_ **

On a cool summer evening, a mountain climber fights back. With one hand anchored to the rock face, she raises her climbing ax. The climber sinks it deep into the top of her attacker's head and leaves it there.

Over a hundred miles away, Bella collapses in her bedroom.

.

"Just do it," Rose says, gritting her teeth.

Bella wraps her hands around the haft and yanks upward. Rose's head jerks back, but the ax is really fucking in there. Her hair is matted with blood, it's all down her face, pooled in her eyes as she looks up at her from the dirt. Bella shakes her hands out and tries again, this time bearing a foot down on her shoulder, and heaving back with all her might.

The blade separates from bone with a sickening scrape. Bella drops the ax. Rose hits the ground, convulsing, skull cracked open, a bowl of pulverized, shivering grey matter.

"Did they get away?" Bella asks. She kneels beside her in the dirt.

Rose drags herself up to her elbows. She looks offended underneath the dark clots of gore. "Of course not."

Rosalie bites down hard on Bella's thigh and opens an artery. An exchange. Bella grips the bark of the tree behind her as the plates of Rose's skull grow back together. When Rose pulls away, the bite mark on her leg closes itself.

…

…

**_OCTOBER_ **

Alice screams when she wakes up. It startles Bella awake in the rocking chair beside her bed. She stumbles to her feet and grabs Alice by the shoulders, and- giving her a firm shake- she settles next to her on the bed.

"Bella, what the fuck?" she says, blinking like she doesn't trust her eyes. She struggles out of the covers and touches Bella's stomach through her sweater. "I saw you…I saw you stab yourself." She lifts the hem of Bella's sweatshirt and stares at the pale, jagged scar. "How is that possible?"

"You fainted," Bella says. She pulls Alice's hand away and tugs her shirt back down. "You hit your head."

"God, don't lie to me like that."

"I'm not. There's a huge bump on the back of your head. I'm not saying you didn't see what you saw… I just don't know how to explain that part. I don't _want_ to lie to you. What do you remember?"

"Well, I kissed you," she says. "I guess I'm sorry for that. But I didn't think your reaction was very _proportionate_." The end comes up like a joke because she's out of her depth. When it doesn't hit, Alice sighs. "Then you freaked out and started bleeding and ran out of the gym. I followed you out into the woods. You screamed at the sky and cut yourself open. You said something and… and…" She shakes her head. "I…Bella, I saw Rose."

Bella swallows and nods.

Alice presses her palm over Bella's chest, over her heart that doesn't beat like it used to. "You did something terrible didn't you?"

"Yeah."

…

…

**_APRIL_ **

Rose weaves through the treetops as Bella struggles over the forest floor. She's supposed to be in class right now, but she woke up to Rose hovering over her bed like a sleep paralysis demon wearing a cheer uniform like a sick joke. She's showing off now that she's figured out how to stick around during the daytime. Before, the ground would just swallow her up, but now she's outrunning it. With ease. Bella can feel the earth groaning below her as she walks like it's stalking them.

Bella knows one of the real reasons she's up in the trees and not down here is that her family left town a few weeks ago. Just up and moved and left her here. At least, that's how it feels to Rose. Before, at least she could check on her brothers and gradually steal her clothes back, but now they're gone. Somewhere back east, too far from Bella for Rose to follow. What does it feel like to bury a body then leave it behind?

Bella bends to pick a wildflower. When she looks up again, Rose is gone. She scans the visible undersides of branches but everything is still and quiet, she's all alone out here.

Suddenly, heat lances through her upper arm. Bella hisses in pain and shock. A giant chunk of her arm is missing, a bloody tendon stretched between them. "You could ask first before you go all Hannibal Lector on me, Jesus Christ!"

Rose shrugs and bites down, snapping the fiber. She wipes the corner of her mouth. She offers her wrist which Bella reluctantly takes and brings to her mouth. This is her life now.

.

Bella flips through the pages of Emmett's newest letter. He didn't write much but there are a few sketches included. A cartoon bear, a beetle, the front of his house from memory. He tells her he's learning to draw and that her letters make him happy.

He's sweet. It forms a rock in her stomach.

"Show me again," she says.

Rose frowns. "Just give it up. I don't remember that night."

"I know, but maybe-"

"Fine." Rosalie leans against a tree and stills completely. She stares at a single spot until her eyes glaze over. The image flickers in Bella's head like an old projector. A dark room, pipes overhead, the palpable groan of loud machinery from another room, and a twitch of movement. It's choppy and vague, but it's all she's managed to recover from the night she died.

When Bella opens her eyes, Rose is frowning with her arms crossed. "It's hopeless."

"I'm sorry," Bella says quietly. Rose's memories leave her fritzing and jumbled. She hands over the pages from Emmett. "Here. I know he'd want you to have them."

Rose takes them. She looks at them so intently, it makes Bella feel like vomiting the rock from her gut. Her gaze is soft and the smile the drawings put on her face is one not so easily seen on her. She looks up, glowing with it. "Tell him I'm alive," she says abruptly.

"What? That's not- No. I _won't_ do that to him."

"Then I will."

…

…

**_NOVEMBER_ **

At school, the air is grim the moment Bella steps in from the rain. The hall is a collection of murmurs. A lone cheerleader is crying into her locker, blue bow sagging in her silver-white hair.

She settles into her usual seat in English next to Edward. She hasn't spoken to him or Alice since the night of the dance. She doesn't blame Alice for not returning her texts and really Edward either.

"As much as I resent you guys ditching me…what the fuck did you do to my sister?" he says. He even puts down his book. Possibly his most sincere gesture.

"I had something I had to do."

"Did it involve traumatizing Alice?"

"Not intentionally," she mutters. "Is she bad?"

"That's the thing. I have no idea. Usually, she never shuts up after you guys hang out, but since the dance, she's been completely mute on the subject of you. Any other time, I'd be relieved, but…that whole night started to give me a bad feeling after you guys left."

Bella clicks her pen. "Do you think it's possible to resist demonic temptation?"

For a moment, Edward looks dismayed at her obvious sidestep, but he can't resist this topic. She knows this. _He_ knows that she knows this, and it annoys him. "If you had something to live for, maybe."

"What if that's what got you there in the first place?"

"To live for something that damns you…" He looks above her head, contemplating. "Sounds like it was never a matter of resisting temptation but of…facing the consequences, whenever they come… Are you alright? You're worried about your soul?"

"No, I know where it's going."

"You sound so sure."

"I am."

The teacher calls attention to the front of the room. The usual discussion question isn't up on the board yet and instead of the attendance clipboard and sunny good morning, Mrs. Lloyd is clutching a single sheet of paper in her hands, a frown etched into her face. She reads slowly from the page. "It is with sadness that I tell you about a loss to our school family."

Bella lowers her head to her desk, nauseous suddenly.

.

At lunch, the cafeteria is quieter than usual. She hasn't seen Alice all day, so she sits with her old friend group. Jessica is staring at her tray of food, either tolerating Mike's arm around her or being completely unaware of it.

Angela offers Bella a weak smile. "Did you know Lauren?"

"Not really. She was…one of Rose's friends. Did you?"

"We all grew up together. I haven't really talked to her since middle school, but…"

"I'm sorry." Bella squeezes her hand.

Eric looks up from his phone and jerks his head to flick his bangs out of his eyes. "I heard her throat was cut open. How much do you wanna bet it's the same guy?"

Jessica gets up and walks away. Mike throws his apple at Eric's head. "Nice going."

"What'd I say?" He looks around the table for support. Finding none, he picks up Mike's apple and takes a bite. "So do you think they'll let us go home early?"

.

Alice is waiting by her truck after her last class of the day and week. It's only Monday but halfway through the school day, the county decided to shut it all down until further notice. It's hard to justify business as usual when the body count is this high.

It's grey out. About to storm again. They climb into the cab together and sit in silence as the parking lot empties. She thinks of the dark droplet of fake blood as it slid across her skin. How is it possible that a stupid school dance has been the brightest point in the darkest year imaginable?

Beside her, Alice is staring straight ahead. Rain starts to sprinkle on the windshield. The wind picks up and carries some leaves across the lot.

"It's her, isn't it?"

"I-"

"She's _killing_ people!"

Bella stiffens as adrenaline poisons her blood. "Someone killed her too."

"Someone?" Alice turns in her seat. Her dark eyes bore into the side of Bella's face. She looks horrified. "Bella…tell me the truth or I swear to god- Was it you?"

"No," Bella says firmly. "I don't know what the fuck happened to her that night, but it wasn't me, and I'm almost sure it wasn't Emmett either."

"Look, I don't care about how Rose died because it's over with and she's _clearly_ fine now. But this isn't about Emmett either. She's killing students now. Lauren was her friend. What chance does anybody else have?"

"I don't think Rose did this."

"So there's just another person taking bites out of people around Forks? She's right in front of you, Bella! Does she even care who she kills?"

Bella lowers her head. "Do you want me to tell you we printed out a list of sex offenders? Because I totally will. Just for you."

Alice smiles slightly despite herself or maybe it's just a remnant of shock. There's a sadness in her face that Bella recognizes so well. "Bella…this is so fucked up."

"I know. There's just something off about Lauren's death. She wouldn't… Not like that."

"I want to believe you, but the Rose I knew…she wouldn't even hesitate."


	6. Chapter 6

**_LAST DECEMBER_ **

Bella is digging through Christmas leftovers when Rose walks into her house without knocking. She has snowflakes in her hair and a strange look on her face. She brought in the cold with her. Bella shivers in her sweater.

"We broke up," Rose says in a breath. It sounds like relief. It _sounds_ like the same line she gives every other week.

"Should I say 'fuck him' or will you hold it against me when you guys get back together in three days?" Bella asks as she turns back to the fridge. The neighbors always bombard Charlie with casseroles and desserts during the holidays. He says it's definitely upped since she moved in with him in seventh grade.

"I mean it this time."

"That's what you always say. Hey, do you want one of these gingerbread cops? Charlie thinks they're stupid, but it's fun to bite the heads off."

"Bella," Rose says, a desperate note in her voice. It strikes her as odd. Rose doesn't do desperation. She doesn't cry. She doesn't even buy waterproof mascara. "It's over. For real."

"Are you okay?"

Her face betrays her before the words can come out. Bella hugs her in the cool air and the yellow slice of light from the fridge. Her clothes are cold. Bella has never seen her cry before let alone felt it against her. Rose squeezes her like it's more than comfort for her.

"Why did you do it?" Bella asks.

Rose pulls away. Her blue gaze is wavering at first, but it strengthens as she finds the conviction. "I think…you deserve more than sneaking around with me."

"You didn't have to."

"Yes, I did." Her _Bitch_ necklace glints in the light as she halves the space between them. She takes Bella's face in her hands and presses her lips to her forehead. "I just needed to tell you. I have to go, but I'll see you tomorrow. We can talk." She rolls her eyes a little at that last part. She's Rose Hale, after all.

It's freezing outside when Bella walks her to her car. The porch light illuminates the heavy snowfall blurring the neighborhood. Rose looks up, snowflakes caught in her eyelashes. She laughs. It's uncharacteristically sweet.

Bella waves from the end of her driveway as her lights disappear down her street. She never sees her alive again.

.

The next morning, Emmett tosses broken icicles at her window until she's annoyed enough to acknowledge him. Bella crawls out of bed and throws her window open. "Em, do you have any idea what time it is?"

He shrugs and holds up a brown paper bag from the bakery and a coffee. "Can I come in?"

"I guess."

When she gets downstairs, Emmett is standing in her living room looking at the picture frames lining the mantel. The coffee and pastries are on the kitchen table. She takes a sip. It's black with just the barest imagining of sugar. He had to have made it with Rose in mind.

She leaves the pastries for Charlie and joins Emmett in the small living room.

"I didn't know you grew up here," he says. He's looking at a picture of her covered in mud with Jacob Black and Leah Clearwater. She must have been about seven at the time.

"I did. I lived with my mom in Arizona for a few years, but I came back right around the time you guys moved here."

"I remember that," he says, smiling. "On the first day of school, I dared you to eat dirt. I didn't think you'd do it."

She shrugs. "It wasn't that bad."

He glances briefly at the group picture of them before junior prom. It was taken at Rose's house in front of her gigantic fireplace. Rose with Emmett, his tie perfectly matching the ice blue of her dress. Lauren with Royce in silver. And Bella and Tyler, red and green and clashing spectacularly. They went as friends and spent all of two seconds together the whole night.

"Em," she says, breaking something. "What are you doing here?"

"She's not answering her phone."

"She said you guys broke up."

He sits down on the couch, and Bella's sure he didn't even look this defeated when they lost the regional championship last year. He runs a hand through his black hair and leans forward over his knees, a red scratch bright on his neck. "I think she was cheating on me."

Guilt sparks down her spine. That's what it was all those times, the parties, the sleepovers. _Who loves you?_

"But it's okay, I mean. I was kinda mad when I put it together, but I don't know. I wasn't the best boyfriend all the time. I just always thought we were good."

"Em…"

"I don't mean to dump all this on you. And I'm not gonna ask you if you know who he is. I just want to find her. I wanna make things right. I love her, you know. I'll always love her."

…

…

**_NOVEMBER_ **

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Alice nods resolutely, but from the way she flinches as Bella drags the knife over her own palm, it's clear she's not ready. Too late now. A tiny bead of blood plummets to the ground. The dirt begins to fracture immediately, spiderwebs of cracks that shift as the ground begins to shake.

Rosalie claws her way out of the earth like a monster. Every inch of this world is a potential grave. Hell is a body in waiting.

Alice steps behind Bella and grabs the fabric of her sweatshirt. She peeks around her shoulder as Rose rises to her feet, dirt cascading off of her. Rose clears her face and opens her eyes. She brushes uselessly at her arms and squints at the sun.

"What do you want?" she says. She seems disoriented. Disdain twists her face when she notices they're not alone. "Why did you bring her?"

"We just want the truth."

"Fine," Rose says. There's a defiant edge in her voice. She's prepared to lie, Bella can see it, but she won't.

She touches Rose's dirty face. "Listen to me, okay? Lauren's dead."

"What?"

"Lauren Mallory. She's dead."

Rose takes a step back, the annoyance drops from her face like rotten fruit. "I don't- Why would you say that to me?"

"I'm not kidding. They found her. Drained of blood. Missing a huge chunk of her throat."

"I didn't-"

Bella nods. "I know."

Rose wraps her arms around herself and frowns. Her eyes move like she's reading something out of thin air. Inside her own head, Bella sees a dim-lit room, the pipes above. A shadow of a man. There's something in his hand.

" _Who_ found her?" Rose asks sharply.

It pulls Bella from the memory. She presses the heel of her hand to her forehead. "I don't know."

Alice moves out from behind Bella. She keeps one fist bunched in her sweater but manages to look Rose in the blood-red eye. "Her boyfriend."

"Who's her boyfriend?"

"Royce King."

Something sets in Rosalie's face, something grave and exactly three hundred and seven days old. Bella recognizes it as instantly as the blood they share, the heartbeats divided between them: Rosalie knows who killed them both.

Rose turns squarely toward the town. Bella grips her upper arm tightly. "If you kill him, Emmett will never be free."

"I don't care."

"Yes you fucking do."

..

Alice looks out the window as Bella pulls onto the road. It's raining steadily now. The gutters are filling up, and it's getting dark.

"I should get you home," Bella says just to say something. She doesn't know where they stand. She expected never to hear from her again after the dance. Now they're floating somewhere, in the middle of some fugue state.

"I want you to explain it to me," Alice says finally. She looks away from the window. "All of it. How the fuck did you bring her back?"

Bella grips the steering wheel. "I'll take you home."

"We're going to your house. You're going to tell me. She might kill him, Bella." There is a firmness to her that Bella will never understand. It's the kind of quality that would make her so much better suited to splitting her soul than Bella, but for that very reason, Alice would never make that deal.

"She might." Bella stops at a red light and looks straight ahead. "He copied the news. He drained Lauren's blood, but he didn't do it like her. They didn't report that part- the extremital bites."

"So we tell your dad. We make him believe us."

Bella shakes her head. "She thinks he's the one that killed her and dumped her in that river for me to find. Either way, we'll know by tomorrow."

By the time they pull up in front of her house, there's some snow mixed in with the rain. It splats against the windshield as the engine quiets. Bella's thoughts slowly turn inward. She thinks of Royce King and the way he'd orbit Rose after every time she split with Emmett. _I'll be your shoulder to cry on._ _We could get back at him, you know. I could think of a few ways._ The sharp glint in his eye when Rose would look him up and down and laugh, link her arm through Bella's, not even worth her time. Boys like Royce don't get rejected like that enough. It must have stacked up so high over the years. Rose, so beautiful and so completely unattainable. If it were possible, she would have walked right through him.

"Do you think he did it?" Alice asks.

"Yeah, I do."

.

Alice is sitting exactly where Emmett sat on her couch almost a year ago. There are two untouched mugs of tea steaming on the coffee table in front of them. It's not like Hell spits up a rule book when you sell your soul. She could have already damned Alice the minute she saw Rosalie exhume herself.

"You hurt yourself to call her," Alice says like she's testing a branch. "How did you know that would bring her back?"

Bella twists her fingers together. She's never talked about this before. Rose didn't seem to care about the specifics, just the constraints. "I can't explain it very well."

"Please, try," Alice says. She puts a hand on her arm, a reassuring pressure.

"My life is tied to hers," Bella says slowly. "It was a mistake. I know that, but you have to understand- I loved Rose. Almost my whole life. I know you didn't like her, but she was my best friend. She died the night she told me she left Emmett for me. I would have looked for her body for the rest of my life. Turns out, it only took two weeks. I broke away from my search group, I could _feel_ her in my blood."

Alice presses down harder on her arm. It's involuntary. It only pushes her further.

"And there she was, lying there. Blue, stiff. Wearing one of my sweaters even though she had a million of her own. The back of her head was broken open. You wouldn't believe the smell. When her body landed there, it broke through the ice over the top of the river. Her hand was just…floating along. I didn't go to her funeral. I was catatonic for weeks."

"I remember," Alice says. "Your dad spoke. He said, more than anything, you wanted to be up there, but you couldn't. He asked everybody to understand that. And we did, Bella."

Her eyes burn with tears. There is a rawness inside her that allowed the rot to grow. Maybe that's what brought the Devil straight to her.

"In February, I had a dream, I guess. Or some kind of- I don't know- _vision_. Felt like a railroad spike in my skull. A voice. It told me, through injury I could reach God. I didn't fucking want God. I remember it laughing. It said: _God is anything you want_. And I wanted Rosalie."

Bella holds her hand out. The curved knife grows out of her skin and settles in her grip. Alice recoils, and she's right to do so. The blade hums. "This came to me the next night. The moment I touched it, I knew I couldn't take it back. I didn't care." She glances over at Alice, who shivers, but squeezes her arm to go on. "At first, I was scared. I cut my finger. It wasn't enough, but it worked. She came out of the ground screaming. I pulled her straight from Hell. But apparently, it's not as bad as people talk about because she tried to crawl back into the ground. And then she saw me. And the knife. I didn't know how it worked, but she seemed to have a better idea. I thought she was going to hug me, but instead, she bit my throat like a fucking vampire. She took so much blood. Too much. But it didn't matter. I'm as dead as she is. We keep each other alive. When one of us gets hurt, we drink from the other. But…"

The knife dissolves in her hand. She flexes her fingers to wait out the tremors.

"But what?"

"The blood has to come from somewhere. I figured that out the hard way."

"You didn't know?"

Bella shakes her head, smiling joylessly. "That she was killing people? No. Not until the summer. She had a bullet hole in the side of her face. It blew her jaw clean off. I had to drip my blood down her throat. I asked her what the fuck happened. She told me we were getting weak. And she was right. Every little paper cut I got bled profusely. If I brushed against a table, I'd get a bruise like a dinner plate. One morning, I was walking down the stairs and my leg snapped. Rose saw all this and fixed it without telling me. I didn't understand how we were suddenly so healthy. It got to the point where I was better off than I was when I was actually alive, but I should have known."

"There's no way you could have known that."

"I think I knew. I saw the news. I just didn't want to believe it. I had Rose back. Nothing else mattered." Bella takes in a breath. "And then you walked into my life, and being friends with you and Edward made me realize that I decided to change my whole life at a time when I didn't think I'd live another day. That maybe if I…if I didn't bring her back, if I just found you instead, maybe-" Her chest tightens unbearably. She's denying Rose by saying these things. "Rosalie deserves to rest. I don't really know for sure if she was in Hell before, but I damned us both when I brought her here. When we run out of blood, that's it."

Alice wraps her arms around Bella's shoulders. She presses their heads together. "I wish I'd found you before. I didn't know you needed me."

"You couldn't have. This is on me. All the deaths. Lauren's. Maybe even Rose's too." Bella smashes her hands into her face. "I don't think I can stop her. This is all my fault."

"No," Alice says fiercely, hard as shrapnel. "We'll find a way. We'll make her stop."

She never should have taken Alice's number from Edward because of the look on her face right this second. Loyalty to a cause worse than death. What a waste of devotion.

"She told Emmett."

"What?"

"A couple months after I brought her back. She told Emmett the truth in a letter. He didn't believe it. He thought it was a horrible joke. Then she went to see him. He told me she almost attacked him. That she was like an animal. He told me what I did was unforgivable. That it wasn't Rose. Just some unholy, bastardized version of her- his words." Bella untangles herself from Alice's arms and stands for a moment in the glowing orange light from the fire. "He rejected her. After all that, even when she says she doesn't, she loves him. I brought her back, and she loves him."

"I don't know what to say to that."

"There's nothing," Bella says quietly. "I can take you home if you want."

"Against my better judgement," Alice says, standing in the light beside her, "I want to stay here with you."

.

.

When Charlie Swan gets into the station in the early morning hours, there is a plastic bag on his desk containing a photo of Rosalie Hale, the hammer that killed her, and the name Royce King II.

Proud of her restraint, Rosalie runs for Bella's house. She knows she'll be over the moon. She kept her hands clean, Emmett will be free, Royce will burn in Hell, eventually. And Rose will be right there next to him, stoking the flames.

Just the look on his face when he turned his light on, and she was there. The way he fell to the ground and whimpered. The give of his bones beneath her hands. The way he screamed.

He'll be in the hospital when they come to arrest him. They'll handcuff him to the bed. She feels nearly phosphorescent by the time she's leaping from the driveway to Bella's window.

All the light inside her dies when she sees them nestled together under the covers, Alice's head tucked beneath Bella's chin, Bella's arms around her, the image she's been fighting for years. Something straight from Hell sears the inside of her chest. She wants to rip the window from the wall and fling it over the mountains. The wood of the sill creaks beneath her hands. Alice stirs. She lights up in Rose's vision like a prey animal.

She lunges for her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter! thanks so much for reading!

**_NOVEMBER_ **

Edward looks out of place in her bedroom. His hair is flat on one side from sleeping. He's in his pajamas and a big blue coat that can't be his. She called him from Alice's phone that was abandoned on the floor in front of the open window when she woke up this morning. The curtains were flapping in the freezing wind. She could see her breath. When she got up to close it, the smear of blood on the sill stopped her cold.

"Let me get this straight. You sold your soul to Hell for _Rosalie Hale_ , and not only has she killed over a dozen people and inspired a copycat, but she has my _sister_ too?"

"I-"

"What the fuck did you _think_ would happen?"

"I know, okay! You think I don't know how fucked up this whole situation is?" She throws her pillow at him. He manages to catch it by the corner. "I need your help, okay?"

"Do you even have a plan?"

"Vaguely."

He sighs and grabs his keys off the dresser. "Do me a favor the next time darkness calls to you. Pretend you can't hear."

.

Alice wakes up in the jaws of panic, coughing violently. Her chest heaves as she struggles to breathe without sucking in water.

"Oh, good. You're awake," Rosalie says, dropping the bucket.

She manages to catch her breath after a few seconds, dripping dirty stormwater into a puddle beneath her. She blearily takes in her surroundings, but it's dark. It sounds like a furnace is groaning somewhere. Her arms are stiff and locked together around the drainpipe behind her. There's a cut on her cheek that stings insistently.

"Rose? Why am I fucking tied up? Where are we?"

Rose makes a fake pouty face at her and flips the page of the notebook in her hands. "Oh, listen to this. It's from a week before I died. ' _I wish everything she told me yesterday was because she felt like she couldn't tell anyone else, but I'm always just a stand-in for Bella. She doesn't care who she's talking to. I feel so stupid bleeding for her like this._ ' I love your journal, it's so poetic. You sound just like Bella!" Her red eyes widen in mock-praise before narrowing hellishly. "You _really_ couldn't stand me, could you? And yet, you followed me around for years. Do you know what I've learned from all this? Nobody was ever fucking honest with me."

"Why are you doing this?" Alice strains against the thick tape at her wrists.

Rose shrugs. She tosses the notebook into the murky puddle at her feet. "Rage? A lust for carnage? Doesn't matter. I may not have wanted to come back to life- especially not as this fucking abomination- but I'm here, and you're ruining it."

"Me? What have I ever done to you?"

"Everything was fine until you decided you needed a friend. You could've picked anybody. Bella was _mine_."

"She doesn't belong to you. You're _dead._ "

Rose tilts her head. "Well, if that's all it takes."

.

"Do you have any idea where she would go?" Edward asks.

"I don't think she'd go anywhere I would know. What about you? You must have third-wheeled with her and Emmett before."

"I barely knew her at all outside of school," he says as he turns off her street. He sits up abruptly. "Oh my god."

"What?"

"You don't think…"

"No way."

.

The door to the school's gym is busted open. Part of the sheared-off lock is laying on the pavement.

"You've got to be kidding me," Edward says, looking around. The place is a ghost town. He shines a flashlight inside. The sweeping beam picks up the dust in the air. Schools are completely different places when empty. The blood makes it worse.

"How di-"

Below them, a scream pierces the liminality. The flashlight drops from Edward's hand as he sprints for the stairwell. The iron of the foreign blood in her veins pulls her forward, alive in the proximity of Alice.

"Wait," Bella shouts, but he's already around the corner. "Don't be stupid. She's strong and fast. You won't see her coming!"

She chases after him, dread collecting in the pit of her stomach. Edward's shoes squeak on the linoleum as he rounds the corner to the stairs. He takes them two at a time. All the grace of death manifested in Rosalie. Bella trips halfway down and slams into the damp concrete wall. She hits the floor at the base of the stairs, the wind knocked out of her, useless excess of adrenaline.

From the ground, she sees the pipes along the ceiling. The wet walls that breed mold beneath the school hallway. Her eyebrow is split open from the fall. Warm blood trickles down her temple. This is where it happened. She's sure. And if she doesn't get up, it's going to happen again.

She turns her head and glimpses Edward rushing Rose, his arms outstretched to grab her. Rosalie spins at the last second and grabs him by the throat, forcing his momentum upward. He comes down on the screwdriver in her left hand. It punctures his stomach with a soft wet squelch.

Rose shoves him off of her, and he lands in a heap next to Alice on the floor. Alice screams, blood and tears down her face.

Bella heaves herself to her feet. She didn't get any of the power or speed, just the burden, and someone _has_ to be responsible. She staggers into the room and throws herself in front of her friends. "Let them go. They haven't done anything. I'm here. What do you want?"

"I don't want anything from you." Bella watches her eyes flick back and forth between herself and Alice who's doing her best to get Edward to his feet. The screwdriver is still lodged crudely in his gut. Blood is sloughing off of both of them. It looks bad.

"So you're kidnapping and torturing people now? Why are you acting like this?"

"You're not even _here_ anymore," Rose says thinly.

"What does that mean? I'm not abandoning you. I'm going to Hell for you for god's sake."

"I never asked you to do that."

Bella looks over her shoulder at the hobbled crawl of her friends at the start of the stairs. Without mistake, she knows Rose is letting them go. Not out of compassion. She can always find them again. "You were never a good friend."

Her eyes flash with Hell-haunted wrath. "Why? Because I loved my boyfriend?" Rosalie pushes her squarely in the chest. She stumbles back a few feet. If she wanted to, she could put Bella through the wall. "Because I didn't sit around and fucking write poetry with you every day, I'm a bad friend?"

"You were horrible. You tormented people, you used them. You pretended to be friends with people and threw it in their faces when they leaned on you. Why do you even care about me and Alice? It's not like you ever loved me." Bella pushes her back. "You led me on. You treated me like shit."

"You let me," she says darkly. "Don't talk about me like I'm evil. _You're_ the one raising the dead. You're the one holding me here. If you hated me so much, why couldn't you just let me die?" The strength in her voice falls out and with it, she loses so much of her rage. All that's left is misery. "Why did you bring me back?"

Bella softens, guilt-ridden. What could she possibly say that isn't selfish and rooted in her own loneliness? She took Rose's afterlife from her, and now she's stuck here, blood-streaked and tinged red against the world, a hateful revenant. "Rose, listen to me. You have to stop. We'll find another way, but we can't go on like this."

"You think I _wanted_ any of this?" Rose shouts. Her hands fly to her head. She anchors her fingers in her hair and pulls. "Because you couldn't let me go, I _have_ to do this. I don't care about myself. Don't you understand that? I'm trying to keep you alive, to give you a chance to live before we run out of borrowed time. And you think I don't love you? This is the only way I know how."

The knife forms in her hand like a waking dream, the weight of it is almost comforting at this point. So many times she's felt the hot blade pierce her skin and muscle. Scraped it against bone. She's used it to dig bullets out of Rose's chest and cut away the clothes melted in her skin when someone tried to torch her outside of Seattle. They have both accepted so much violence at its blade. Things could have been so much different. She thinks of that stupid bake sale everyone loved so much. The purple cupcakes that tasted like dye. Rose's smile. Her laugh when she shoved the frosting into Emmett's face. _Oh, you think that's funny?_ Why wasn't friendship enough? A tear slides down Bella's cheek. Why did she always push Rose for more?

"You're right." Turning the knife in her hands, she glances at the bloodied stairwell. They made it. That's all that matters anymore. "I love you, but you shouldn't have to carry a cross for me."

In an echo of herself, she plunges the knife into her slow-beating heart. Demonic agreement fulfilled, she falls to the ground. Soul expired.

"Bella! No! Why would you-" Rosalie drops to her knees beside her, beautiful as ever in the sodium lights. "You idiot," she says, pressing her hands over the wound that won't heal. There's not enough blood in the world without the curse of the dark hand from below. Rosalie closes her eyes.

The ground fissures beneath them.

…

…

**_LATE DECEMBER_ **

Esme flits in and out of her room every other second it seems. All she got was a broken arm and some cuts, but Alice doesn't say anything. For the first time in the ten years they've been a family, she lets her mother take care of her. Even if that means a glass of Christmas lemonade sweating on her bedside table.

At the knock on her door, she expects her again with soup. The fifth bowl of the day. Or Carlisle, trying out a joke. Or even Emmett, basking in exoneration for the millionth deserved time. But when she looks up, she almost doesn't recognize the girl standing there, practically a universe away. She has to search her head for the name.

"Angela?"

"Hey. I know this is a little weird coming to your house and all but…" She hands over a blue birthday card envelope and shrugs. "I thought digital would be a little impersonal. I printed it out when the yearbook advisor was out of the room. I thought you'd like to have it."

It's from the Halloween dance. Really, the only time they were ever photographed together. The green light and sticky blood. Bella's fangs made her look more walrus-like than anything, but her smile is easy and genuine. She has her arm around Alice's waist. For all of Alice's talk, it was Bella who made her feel like she belonged there that night.

Angela adjusts her glasses. "I know we don't have great luck with this sort of thing around here, but I know we'll find her soon. I miss her too."

"Thanks," Alice says quietly. "This was sweet."

.

She checks on Edward after Angela leaves. He's reading like nothing's changed. Like he didn't almost die trying to save her. She thought they'd never make it out of that school. He smiles when he sees her in the doorway. "Hey, Owlice."

Emmett's lying on the floor playing Edward's Gameboy. Except for the broken nose from a fight that didn't heal quite right, Em's the same booming presence. None of them have gone back to school yet. She can't imagine the reception, and she doesn't have to. Carlisle is thinking of transferring. The roots here are rotten anyway.

"It shows up every night," she says, moving to the foot of his bed. It's covered with Esme's knit afghans. Worrying at the hospital for her kids turned her into a machine for the things. There's at least four scattered around Alice's room. "It's like it _wants_ us to."

"Yeah," Edward says, bending the corner of his page. "Here too."

"It's always under my bed," Emmett says. "I think it's there right now. I can almost hear it."

"I want to," Alice says simply. She lowers her head at the admission.

Edward's face bends. There's pain there, empathy, disgust, and understanding. She feels that very concoction in her own chest almost all the time these days.

"It's a bad idea," he says. "But…I think about it."

"I _dream_ about it," Emmett says. "Bella was…you know what, she was a friend. I don't care what went down. Anybody who loved Rose that much is fine by me... I know that now."

"She's in Hell," Alice says. "Wouldn't we be doing her a favor?"

Edward sets his book aside fully. "Is Hell worse than Earth? Can we even make that choice? And what about what she would become? She would have to kill."

"What about other means of blood?"

" _Human_ blood? Not so easy to come by," Emmett almost sings. "Look. What I saw of Rose…it wasn't good. I could tell she had some new instincts. She wasn't the same. It was like a demon playing a part. Just _really_ well."

"Is Heaven worth it if the people you love aren't there?" she asks.

"God, I hope so."


End file.
